Orthodixie

Click the above link. Interesting!

We were on the way home and I was singing songs from the Liturgy. She, at the time – two years old, said, “Do it again, Dad!”

I remember this, especially from my oldest daughter, particularly the Trisagion hymn: “Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal One, have mercy on us!”

So, between the grocery store and the house, I must have sang the Trisagion about twenty times.

I laid her down for her nap and she said, “Sing ‘Twinkle, Twinkle’.” So, with almost a tear in my eye, appreciating the moment, I sang “Twinkle, twinkle, little star …” When it was over she demanded: “Sing the ABC’s!” That’s when I told her it was nap time; time to go to sleep.

We do grow crusty and old, don’t we? Children love to sing, love to dance, love to experience the joy in life. Like Chesterton’s example below, God and children must be a lot alike. And to think, to get into the party, we’ve got to become just like them.

Holy God, have mercy on us!

A child kicks its legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough… It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again,” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again,” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike: it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.

G. K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

This meditation originally appeared on the Antiochian webpage.

When the holy and most pure child Mary (Mariam or Miriam in Hebrew) reached the age of three, her parents, the righteous Joachim and Anna, fulfilled the vow they had made to dedicate her to God. Going in procession with a company of maidens carrying torches, they presented their child at the Temple in Jerusalem, where Zecharias the High Priest took her under his care, blessing her with these words: The Lord has glorified thy name in every generation; it is in thee that He will reveal the Redemption that he has prepared for his people in the last days. He then brought the child into the Holy of Holies something completely unheard-of, for under the Law only the High Priest was allowed to enter the Holy Place, and he only once a year on the Day of Atonement.  

In the icon of the feast, the maidens who accompany the Theotokos are shown bare-headed, as was customary for unmarried girls; but the Theotokos herself, though only three years old, wears the head-covering of a married woman to show her consecration to God.

The holy Virgin lived in the Temple for the next nine years, devoting herself entirely to prayer. In this time she attained the utter purity of heart befitting the destined Bearer of the Most High; she became in her own person the fulfilment and condensation of all of Israel’s faithfulness. Saint Gregory Palamas says that, when the Theotokos entered the Holy of Holies, the time of preparation and testing of the Old Covenant came to an end for Israel, which was now ready, in the blessed Virgin, to bring forth the Savior.  When Mary approached marriageable age, she was entrusted to the chaste widower Joseph to guard her. (The Prologue says that a life of intentional virginity was unknown among the Hebrews, so the righteous Joseph undertook the forms of marriage so as not to cause scandal among the people.)

“Wherefore the Church rejoices and exhorts all the friends of God for their part to enter into the temple of their heart, there to make ready for the coming of the Lord by silence and prayer, withdrawing from the pleasures and cares of this world.” (Synaxarion)

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Thanks to you, according to my counter, this site has now passed 200,000 hits since signing on with Site Meter back in 2004. It took about 20 months to hit 100,000 … and about 9 more to hit the 200,000 mark.

When I bump into folks that read the blog, I find it kinda scary — like they’ve been eaves dropping and maybe, uh-oh — oh no! … what did I say?

Anyway, so far so good …

THANKS.

AXIOS! Last Sunday, November 12th, Subdeacon Richard Petranek was ordained to the diaconate at St Joseph/Houston, Texas (pictured here) and yesterday, Sunday, November 19th, he was ordained to the priesthood at St George/Houston, Texas. Father Richard, who has been assigned to the pastorate at St Paul Church in west Houston, will serve his “Week of Liturgies” November 20th-26th.

Father Richard may be contacted at:
richardjp at houston dot rr dot com

I had the pleasure of interviewing Fr Richard back in May.

Pic courtesy of dnb.